[Originally posted 27/7; updated a few times and now again (see end) so re-publishing with current date to push it to the top]

It looks like it is finally time to announce Judith Curry’s departure for the dark side, prompted by her comments at RC. I still think she has good intentions, at heart, but has been “captured by the septic narrative” or somesuch. In some respects this intervention is fairly typical of her previous stuff – which is to say, she mouths off without having done her homework, then tries to back off. But the direction she mouths off in is very revealing.

So, where to start. Curry commented at RC in defence of Montford and Gavin answered her. Presumably she thought at the time she was being sane. But then Romm (ht: H) made a post out of the comment / reply which really reads very badly for her, and Curry threw her toys out of the pram: OK, I officially give up over here. Here is something I just posted over at climateaudit… She then appears to go on to argue that all the stuff she said before wasn’t her, it was merely her parroting Montford: “These were not my personal arguments.” I don’t believe that, nor do I think that you can read that from her orignal RC comment. Nor, indeed, can I see why she would want to show up at RC merely to parrot Montford – he can do that himself if he wants to.

The bit of Curry’s comments that I would pick out of RC are

The high level of confidence ascribed to the hockey stick inferences in the IPCC TAR, based upon two very recent papers (MBH) that, while provocative and innovative, used new methods and found results that were counter to the prevailing views. Plus the iconic status that the hockey stick achieved in the TAR and Al Gore’s movie.

I’ve bolded the bit that is especially significant. This is so much a part of the septic worldview: that IPCC ’90 fig 7.1.c was God’s Glorious Revealed Truth in the Age of Gold and everything since then has been downhill as the evil climate so-called scientists manipulated their data to erase the MWP and LIA etc etc. Gavin points out why her view is wrong.

There is quite enough noise in the “climate debate” already. We don’t need any more. Nor do we need people making hasty ill-thought out comments that they will later pretend not to have meant. Curry needs to back off and find time to write down a coherent position that she actually believes in.

[Update: more mixed Curry at blogs.chron.com. That combines some interesting and worthwhile stuff about Antarctic sea ice – read it (though note the minor contradiction / lack of clarity: The paradox of why the Antarctic isn’t melting and the Arctic is has gotten a lot of attention… It’s not like there’s been a big debate in the climate community, or a lot of worry about this, because observations have agreed with the models) – with outrageous lies pandering to the septics (Some people were getting their papers rejected because they disagreed with the IPCC. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. Papers were getting rejected for the wrong reason). Based on her usual modus operandi, I’m sure she will later come back and explain that she didn’t actually mean that, or was just quoting someone else’s book, or something. What she won’t come back with is anything to back it up (ht: IANVS). Oh, and When I speak up about maybe there’s more uncertainty, some people regard that as heresy. is twaddle too. OTOH, with This isn’t a Merchants of Doubt, oil-company-funded effort (though that comment is badly made) she is explicitly endorsing the fact that there *is* a MoD effort elsewhere. Note also the total lack of criticism of WUWT; all in all, I think the “capture” theory still holds]

Montford tries to justify this assertion in his first chapter by highlighting the “difficulty in getting into print any result that went against the idea of catastrophic global warming”. He claims that a paper by Shaopeng Huang and co-authors on proxy temperature reconstructions from borehole measurements “never appeared in print” after being rejected by the journal Nature in 1997 because it showed that the medieval warm period had higher temperatures than today. However Montford strangely neglects to tell the reader that the rejected paper was revised and published in the same year by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, and that the authors published other papers in Nature in subsequent years.

so it seems entirely likely that this is the source of Curry’s lies about Some people were getting their papers rejected because they disagreed with the IPCC. In which case she is caught out yet again parroting tripe from Montford. Montford isn’t a scientist and could be dumb enough to think rejection by Nature is some sort of dissing (rather than a commonplace that happens to veryone) but Curry is a scientist and, had she bothered to investigate rather than parrot, would have known better]

I admit watching this argument (O Tamino, see what you started?) with mixed emotions. The idea of finding common ground with those who are not nutters (JC’s term, I believe) is attractive, and there are some efforts that appear promising – Annan, Hausfather, Verheggen come readily to mind – but she entered the discussion rather half-cocked, and her various statements in several blogs appear to lack coherence. Her strident opposition to paleoclimate reconstructions might make sense if she had her facts straight.

She writes that she is working on a paper to sum up her views, and I suppose this exercise would be better than trying to find her postings throughout the blogosphere. She felt the Mike Mann’s 20th century papers achieved too much prominence and that it was surprising that such a junior researcher was made a lead author for the TAR, and that his work was prominently featured in it. (Secondary source – don’t feel like linking to the Examiner)

Her argument seems much more geared to 2000 than 2010. That’s like a decade. She advocates caution in accepting new work, but I wonder what all the would-be Galileos would think about that.

that comment of Curry’s on Romm’s blog which stoat linked-to tries to give an analogy between climate science and embryonic stem cell development, with both being in a similar state of technical advancement.

I don’t see anything remotely similar between the fields. Which means making objective comparitive statements about the strengths and weaknesses of their leading hypotheses difficult, even if you didn’t find the whole idea pointless.

(For example, do people think this (contrived) argument, or anything resembling it, is an interesting question worthy of research?:

The hypothesis of climate sensitivity being two degrees for doubling C02 is at least as certain as the hypothesis that embryonic and non-embryonic stem cells not being equally useful for breast cancer research.)

The only similarly between the fields is in the area of pure politics, in that political commentators in the US have latched onto both stem-cells and climate science, trying to promote theories in those fields which are compatible with right-wing ideology (those being that man can’t seriously affect climate (which is largely God’s province), and that nearly everything that science wishes to do with embryonic stem cells could be done with non-embryonic stem cells.

Curry’s comments at RC are so obviously and blatantly in bad faith that I don’t see how anybody can honestly defend them. So anyone defending them, in turn, should go in the “bad faith” column (in the next report to the Committee).

One thing I noticed about Curry is that she is an extremely poor communicator. She seems to have difficulty differentiating concepts such as “me”, “him” and “the people” (probably a consequence of her extensive research into tribalism ;)) which makes her writing quite confusing to read.

However, regardless of what she believes, it is important not to give up on her. There could be quite a bit of trouble if she keeps going around making vague accusations of corruption and stuff.

Maybe we should try to come up with some ideas on how to convince her to fact-check things?

My 2-cent psychoanalysis is that Curry is trapped by her own version of a D-K problem.

She has jumped into areas of political science and sociology and made her judgments about what the truth is. Her conviction that the septics have something worth hearing is doubly difficult to overcome.

First it requires that she change her opinion of their competence and motivations when confronted with the evidence. I would expect a scientist to be better able to do this, but science progresses not because all scientists are rational but because they collectively follow a rational process.

Second, it requires that she change her opinion of *her own* competence (and maybe motivations). This seems harder, and it may be that a top scientist is less likely to be able to do so. After all, she has had to excel at successively more difficult levels throughout her life.

So, for her to now come to the understanding that the septics do not act in good faith would require that she alter her understanding of herself.

Judith Curry has a number of good points, a lot of bad communication, and one major blind spot.

Good points: some of her discussion about uncertainty and that it is often broader than many individual assessment or studies find I think is true – it was certainly true in the past (eg, the Charney Report could have had a wider range than 2-3.5 or whatever, and SLR projections have way-underestimated uncertainty, the classic “1998 is likely the warmest year” was “likely” an error, and aerosol uncertainty used to be underestimated in assessments). Of course, one needs to be careful to not make the pdf over-broad. If you aren’t occasionally getting it wrong, then you aren’t setting your bounds tight enough. And I’d argue we’ve gotten a lot better in the last decade (Steve Schneider I think contributed a lot towards making people think more about uncertainty).

Bad communication: the hackles she raises by tossing out poorly thought statements on fields she isn’t an expert on often drown out any deeper (and, hopefully, less objectionable) statement she was trying to make.

The blind spot: She has a clear distinction in her head between “Merchant of Doubt” and “watchdog auditor”. I don’t think she realizes that many of the people she is communicating with now aren’t “watchdog auditors” but rather “jackal auditors” – they aren’t making any attempt to determine useful contributions, they are obsessed with tearing into long-dead horse carcasses over and over. In some circumstances, they could be useful contributions to the ecosystem: see, for example, the many surface temperature reconstructions in this post: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/13/calculating-global-temperature/. Heck, surfacestation.org could have been great if it had been done with any measure of decency, honesty, and lack of leaping to conclusions. I mean, Menne et al. (2010) and the Zeke et al. reconstructions have shown what everyone expected, which is that siting issues aren’t a big problem and that the HadCRUT/NCDC/GISTEMP reconstructions are all pretty good…. but it is nice to have the capability to take new looks at these.

And user-friendly temperature record code is one nice side-effect (eg, Clear Climate Code) that could be actually useful for academics who want to compare model results to surface temperature records by actually emulating the surface temperature approach within the model. Another great side effect is the ability of more people to actually get their hands dirty in real data – it is a great learning tool, and there is lots of fascinating stuff out there.

Unfortunately, McIntyre, Watts, and the rest of the jackal auditors have made this all about their legions of conspiracy-theorists rather than about cordial contributions, and that’s what Judith Curry (in my opinion) doesn’t get.

I don’t particularly object to Dr Curry (quoting M @ 10) “tossing out poorly thought statements on fields she isn’t an expert on”. Hell, I do it all the time! But I wish that *just once* she would engage with people who make substantive criticisms of those statements. Her consistent failure to do so on the RC or CP threads is truly mind-boggling.

My few blog interactions with her have left me wanting. She seems unable or unwilling to make any definitive technical statements.

In one kumbayah thread over at Klein’s, there was a discussion of how to find common ground among bloggers. I suggested one way to distinguish the wheat from the chaff was to use “ΔT = λ * ΔF, ΔF = 5.35 * ln(CO21/CO20) W/m2″ with λ as point in rational dispute.

She found the climate sensitivity equation unsatisfactory while pointing to a post of hers in which she analyses a Lindzen and Choi paper in reference to climate sensitivity. That January post is last thing of hers that I have read that has any technical content.

Sometime later she did a drive by a thread of mine suggesting worrisome uncertainities in pre-1940 ICOAD data. It was an interesting point, but when asked for further details about “worrisome” findings and who “we” were that did the analysis, all I received was silence.

When another discussion turned to her favorite topic – climate uncertainties – she once again fended off any technical discussion by claiming uncertainty in modeling is so large at this time that it is unproductive to discuss probability distributions of modeled climate outcomes. (summary mine)

Dr Curry has one drum to beat: uncertainity. When pressed to quantify it, she demurs. When she entered the HS arena and pressed to provide technical content, she deferred. I have not seen anything in the last six months that indicates she there is anything she wants to contribute to the climate discussion except a generalized and unquantified atmosphere of uncertainity (besides her continual support of The Other Tribe)

This is unsurprising. The tribe she has chosen to associate with often utilize “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” as a strategy to delay action on climate change. Distrust of climate science is not something that Curry wants to reduce, repair, or heal – it is her stock in trade.

Curry made her splash in the blogosphere with a call against tribalism. Given her decidely one-sided criticisms since that time, few are surprised to see her now retreat to her favored tribe.

This is a pretty harsh critique of Curry’s blogging history in recent months. It is based on casual encounters along the way. Perhaps it is unfair. I cannot read her mind. I have not read everything she has written. My characterizations may be off-base. I know that my opinion of her as a FUD-monger could change in a single day; in the day in which she once again posts a substantive and technical thread, a thread in which she shows no tribalism, in a thread in which I learn something new.

Good points: some of her discussion about uncertainty and that it is often broader than many individual assessment or studies find I think is true

Her main target is the IPCC, and if anything, the synthesis the IPCC publishes overcorrects for what you claim is a good point.

Overcorrects.

Look it up.

Of course, I’d like to believe that this is why Curry says the IPCC is “corrupt”, but she takes the opposite course. Which is untenable.

[I think her point about uncertainty *might* be a good one. But (as others have said) she never ever backs it up with anything useable. All we have is “Curry thinks there is more uncertainty than we think” which is no more than a statement of personal opinion -W]

Rocco said :”She seems to have difficulty differentiating concepts such as “me”, “him” and “the people” (probably a consequence of her extensive research into tribalism ;)) which makes her writing quite confusing to read. ”

:-D, the bad thing about being a witch doctor is one has to be mostly correct by the standards of the tribe, if one wants to avoid drowning.

One thing I noticed about Curry is that she is an extremely poor communicator. She seems to have difficulty differentiating concepts such as “me”, “him” and “the people” (probably a consequence of her extensive research into tribalism ;)) which makes her writing quite confusing to read.

She should watch herself then, because, as we all know, one of the biggest problems that has been discovered is that scientists often aren’t good communicators. Depending on your political views, that can be a criminal act.

I think her point about uncertainty *might* be a good one. But (as others have said) she never ever backs it up with anything useable. All we have is “Curry thinks there is more uncertainty than we think” which is no more than a statement of personal opinion

The odds of it being a good point would be a lot higher if she did attempt to back it up. The fact that she – a scientist – doesn’t bother is quite telling, IMO.

JC used the words “linear” and “technocratic” in one of the RC posts, and when I looked that up, I found a lot of Pielke connections. It seems to be used as a pejorative for decisions based on science rather than political debate — and possibly as a growing part of the pushback against evidence-based decisionmaking by regulatory agencies and dismiss any scientist’s opinion about the implications of the science for policy.

Yes, I understand that ‘regulatory action’ is the main purpose (at least for quite a few). But what exactly do you mean by ‘evidence-based’ with regard to the hockeystick, and its (now proven false) assertions about a non-existent MWP (even in the NH alone) and that modern time temperatures being the warmest i a thousand years!?

Note: I mean the assertion is false. The possible historic (global or NH) temperatures we know very little about. Only that uncertainties are huge, very huge … (remember, they were already before the hockestick scrutiny)

I caught that too…as if there was a widespread “prevailing view” of northern hemispheric mean temperature over the past millenium. As you note, this statement (as wrong as it is) is necessary for the subsequent narrative that the evil scientists erased the MWP based on rock-solid science that so clearly showed temperatures exceeding recent warmth.

Finally, perhaps this is something we can all agree with:

Recent Curry comment (via RC thread): “So I have no intention of debating any aspects of the science on this topic.”

I almost fell over laughing; the Judith Curry cycle is complete again.

do
{
JC, step 1. Be all sniffy that the precious little sceptics aren’t being listened to.

[Well, JC, what do they have that’s so worth listening to? We’ve really heard it all before, we think.]

JC, 2. Aggressively list a bunch of sceptic stuff you happened to see on a blog or in a book someplace. Much of it purports to be technical – keep that in mind.

[Sorry JC, none of that stands up to even perfunctory review. This is wrong, that’s wrong, that doesn’t even make any sense. If you’d taken any time at all to look into these claims, you’d see that. We’re puzzled why somebody with your skills is unable to critically assess something that isn’t that far outside your area.]

JC, 3. Get all upset at having been shown up, without acknowledging any error, or any real attempt at responding. Change mind a few times whether you’re just repeating what the sceptics say without passing judgment, or whether you accept those things as great and good and correct. In fact, the fact that the sceptic points were so easily debunked, that’ll convince you to believe them even more now. Really just because the mainstream scientist was so mean to you.

[…?]

JC, 4. Come back, a while after saying you wouldn’t, and say you aren’t actually talking about the technical points, but the broader narrative. Cherish the narrative being told by the dear, precious sceptics. Why aren’t you listening to the sceptics?

[So you can’t actually defend any of their substance, but you still want to buy their overarching theme? Why?]
}
while (2 > 1)

Dear Mr NoMoreGore, Judith Curry’s statements are being pecked to bits, here and elsewhere, because she is getting her facts wrong. And if you choose to stay and discuss arctic sea ice, your statements will be subject to the same scrutiny, as are mine. That’s because we still believe that nobody is entitled to his own facts.

We all enjoy a little comic relief now and then, so as far as I am concerned it would be just fine if you were to stay and justify your claim that “the arctic ice isn’t melting as promised.”

For 5 years I’ve been searching for scientific evidence that the 20th-century warming trend was largely caused by CO2. I haven’t been able to find any. I have found contrary evidence, though:

– Ice core data show that temps change before CO2 levels
– Satellite data fails to show the predicted upper tropospheric hot spot
– Satellite data show the earth to be in a 10-year cooling phase despite rising CO2

Perhaps Mr. Connelly could provide us some links demonstrating why 20th-Century warming was caused by CO2.

[If your searching is as good as your spelling, I’m not surprised you didn’t find much. And you should learn that most competent people in this area have a doctorate. From your list I can tell you’ve read all the usual septic nonsense website. For attribution, I’d recommend you to start at [[Attribution of recent climate change]] which will point you towards a whole pile of papers that you won’t want to read.

Hi, I have just read through the comments. Any view on the climate topic seems immaterial in this thread. It’s all about personal attack. Your behaviour seems like a religious cult attacking someone who wants to leave. You should take a good look at yourselves.

William, I am amused. Curry has, er, “crossed the invisible line” now, to quote you at Pielke Sr’s wiki talk page. In order not to be septics, are we now honour bound to follow you in promoting Curry’s downfall at the hands of septical misinformation, or are we still free to regard this as your mere opinion?

[I think you put too much effort into making that a snark, and too little into making it comprehensible. Curry isn’t a septic -W]

Marc Morano thinks she is!
Check out item “Another warmist turns skeptic? Alarmist laments that Prof. Judith Curry jumps to skeptic camp”, which links to Stoat.
Curry should be very concerned when she is embraced by Morano.

Let’s see, now. Revkin went over to the dark side, despite being threatened with access withdrawal. Kloor started off as a promising source, but is clearly unreliable. Now Curry, one of climate science’s own, is not sufficiently hysterical-compliant.

Pattern? Trend? Do you have any conversions to celebrate? I’m sure you’re pleased that Anthony Watts has written that he understands that CO2 contributes to warming–but then he has never disputed that…

Tie her up. Burn her. She actually recommended that you mindless fools read a book. Can’t have that.

Tom… no, her comments were not casual at all. She made a series of specific point by point claims — almost all incorrect. Part of the reason she got such a lot of well deserved criticism is for making such specific nonsense claims WITHOUT knowing the facts of the matter. Another part was that she depended far too much on the book without knowing nearly enough about the relevant background the book was dealing with!

Realclimate seems to be offline at present, but when it comes back, have a look at the actual discussion. Tom is continuing to misrepresent what went on, either because he has no idea about the discussions and comments ACTUALLY made by Dr Curry — or because he’s still just being dishonest about it.

Mr. Stuart, I read casually through the comments at RC and CP and CA, but again, Curry said she didn’t have the book in front of her and was urging people to read the book to get a fuller (sorry) explanation. When she tried to get into the details, she got tripped up.

Tom, you have the order backwards. It was AFTER she “tripped up” (made a long serious of incorrect claims) that she tried to back out by saying she didn’t have the book in front of her.

That’s why you are simply wrong to say that the problem was she “just asked people to read a book” (she made THAT comment well into the thread and long after her own contributions had been torn to shreds). That’s why you are simply wrong to say she made it clear she was commenting casually (she tried to backtrack to that AFTER trying to write like a credible and well informed critic backfired so badly.)

People interested should look over the thread when realclimate comes back up. Tom’s descriptions are comically inaccurate.

It gets worse. Dr Curry has only really dealt with (acknowledged) ONE of the series of errors in her attempt to get specific. And that was the one case where she missed her own script by failing to follow the book. The rest of the errors — for which she has so far simply not addressed the refutations — were because she followed an error filled book without knowing the background facts.

THAT is what has earned her all the criticism.

The idea of “farming it out” to Tamino is just silly. Realclimate is run by a collection of scientists, and it routinely puts up informative posts by working scientists on topics where they have relevant expertise. Tamino is a regular writer with realclimate, and also professionally a scientist (or better, mathematician) who is also a co-author with them in the professional scientific literature. The post by Tamino gives a good coverage to the whole matter, showing precisely where the underlying assumptions behind Montford’s thesis fall apart; and he is precisely the kind of relevant expert contributor realclimate will feature. That’s what realclimate aims to provide — expert commentary on climate science issues.

It would be great never to hear about those old papers again. The science has long since moved on — confirming all the main conclusions in those early papers while correcting some of the methodological flaws. But when a book comes out actively distorting all the details for the sake of more invalid slurs, it’s good to have an individual who IS willing to point out the real facts of the matter.

I understand Tom, and appreciate that under the circumstances this is not therefore a place where we can “debate” this. But it’s hardly a “debate”. It is really straightforward and now that realclimate is back up people can look at the original thread to check themselves. So I also will not reiterate anything on my own behalf.

Somewhat prior to this current kerfuffle, in a thread at Kloor’s I challenged Judy on her belief in a relatively low sensitivity, specifically saying that recent deep-time paleo results made a low equilibrium sensitivity implausible. She said I was wrong and referred me to a recent Hegerl paper for the reasons why. I re-read the paper (it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it) and… no! Moreover, the paper argued against a low transient sensitivity. Not wanting to base a judgement of her on my own non-expertise, I checked with James Annan (whose field it is) and he agreed that she was wrong.

Connelly, no snipping, please. Feel free to delete the entire comment–but I didn’t hire you as an editor.

Having written for newspapers and magazines, I can assure Tom and everyone else that I never got to hire my editors, either. Nor the copy editors who wrote headlines or provided captions for photos (suggested by me, often ignored).

Every post Fuller makes cements the reality that he has no idea how real journalists work.

[Rats. Now you’ve quoted the post I redacted. Ah well, I’ll leave it this time. Be warned that The Comment Policy will get enforced more severely on this thread from now on -W]

Mr. Stuart, I read casually through the comments at RC and CP and CA, but again, Curry said she didn’t have the book in front of her and was urging people to read the book to get a fuller (sorry) explanation. When she tried to get into the details, she got tripped up.

And, Fuller, this is an outright lie (your MO of life). She presented her bullet points as fact, and presented them as reasons why people should read the book. She didn’t get “tripped up” in the sense of misrepresenting the book, indeed, she was entirely accurate.

So why don’t you quit lying in such a way that 99% of your readers detect it?

Actually, dhogaza (#56), the one error Dr Curry has admitted (her point 7) is when she did diverge from what is in Montford’s book. Steve McIntyre corrected her, after which she acknowledged the error herself at RC.

It is a sign of how far she has sunk that the only error in that pile of bullet points which she has acknowledged openly is one where she had to have the corrections supplied by Gavin backed up subsequently by Steve McIntyre before acknowledging the mistake; and it was the one error in which she did not have to admit an error in Montford’s sorry pile of tripe.

[I’m curious. Can you link to her original error, Gavin’s correction, McI’s correction, and JC’s admission of error? -W]

Perhaps I can make up for TCO’s PWI infractions, I’ve had a couple (well three, going on four) but I promise, no Feynman references.

I got pissed off at Watt’s “post under your own name” policy for people who disagree with him and put up my own name and address on a thread about Singer’s rather weak retort to the Muir Russell report. As a result of this one of his readers sent me a copy of Montford’s book. I hate to admit it, but I did read it, although I did have to force myself past about half way.

Montford sets up the whole premise of his book with his rather inaccurate and truncated history of paleoclimatology in the first chapter. To Montford (as related by Stevie Mac) legitimate paleoclimatology begins and ends with the poorly sourced figure in the IPCC FAR which was based on Lamb. From then on all of paleoclimatology was an attempt to “get rid of the MWP”.

There is just a slight problem with this thesis. Or maybe more.

For one, the figure which appears to have based on Lamb’s work was dropped in the 1992 supplement, as our esteemed host has pointed out. Secondly (aren’t your glad I didn’t say “Primo” and “Secundo”), during the early to mid nineties I was an active participant in the climate change debates on sci.environment and there was an active disagreement about the extent and “beneficial” effects of the MWP. Gavin cited Hughes and Diaz (1994), but this was only one line of evidence which was apparent at that time.

The truth of the matter, as opposed to Montford’s account, is that there was an increasing body of evidence that the MWP was not a global phenomena. In 1998 MBH decided that there was enough paleo evidence to do a reconstruction which stretched back to 1400 CE on a global scale. Note that 1400 does not include the MWP! In 1999 MBH did a reconstruction which went back to 1000 CE for the Northern Hemisphere and showed a MWP which might have reached mid 20th century levels, given the uncertainties. This seems to have been in line with recent (90’s) thinking on the subject, but the 98 and 99 papers were the first attempts to use all the available evidence to reach a conclusion on this subject. Since then there have been a variety of reconstructions using varying sub and supersets of the original MBH network and varying methods. They all come to the same conclusion (although most show greater long time scale variability than the original MBH study, which I consider to be one of the actual weaknesses of the original methodology. Of course Mann also recognized this…).

Montford’s truncated and distorted history of paleoclimatology is the basis for his subsequent argument, but it must be accepted to make sense of anything else he says in his book. A good example is his argument (as related by Stevie Mac) is that using tree rings as climate proxies is worthless. In reality, work on using tree rings as climate proxies stretches back to the early 20th century and is fairly well established. But Montford (as related by Stevie Mac) boldly forges on trying to show that tree rings are lousy proxies, especially if they corrolate to local temperature! Of course the scientists who work with them admit that they are problematic, but so are all the other proxies — that is what makes this science. If it was easy it would be engineering. As a physicist at Argonne National Lab said on a recent show about the hunt for the Higgs Boson said “I get paid to try and understand things we don’t understand. The more things we don’t understand — that’s job security!”. Or, perhaps more famously, and unattributed AFAIK, “science is what we do when we don’t know what we’re doing”.

The most fundamental flaw in Montford’s book is his (as related by Stevie Mac) refusal to recognize that science is an ongoing process. The back and forth as seen in the scientific literature, or more informally in the dreaded emails, is how progress is made. Montford’s (as related by Stevie Mac) refusal to see this is the basic flaw in the book. The fact that a plurality of the references are to CA posts with no attempt made to address the legitimate criticisms leveled at Stevie Mac’s broadsides just makes the book weaker.

Tom Fuller, I invite you to make a cogent argument which refutes this one.

[I’m curious. Can you link to her original error, Gavin’s correction, McI’s correction, and JC’s admission of error? -W]

The error which she has acknowledged is number 7 in her list of points at comment #168 of the RC thread. Gavin’s response is in an insert to that comment.

JC then discusses the whole thing with folks at climate audit who, it seems, persuade her that she does indeed have this one incorrect. See this comment at climate audit by “sod” (who is trying to help Curry recognize the error) with an insert by McIntyre. It goes on for a while after that, but Curry does concede she made an error now that it is being pointed out at climate audit.

William asks, in an insert to my comment #58 above:
[I’m curious. Can you link to her original error, Gavin’s correction, McI’s correction, and JC’s admission of error? -W]
The error which she has acknowledged is number 7 in her list of points at comment #168 of the RC thread. Gavin’s response is in an insert to that comment.

JC then discusses the whole thing with folks at climate audit

This leaves out the best part, though, because before discussing it at CA, she blew off Gavin at RC. How did she blow him off? By stating that she was just parroting Bishop Hill and it wasn’t necessarily her opinion, and that therefore Gavin’s correction failed because … he had directed it to her rather than Bishop Hill! She ignored every factual statement made by Gavin.

And the fact that it was, after all, her error, not Bishop Hill’s (which makes her blow-off of Gavin even more … entertaining?) makes it all the *more* clear that she has never read Mann 2008, or not with sufficient comprehension. My guess is that she picked up that falsehood somewhere else in the blogosphere and simply misattributed it to Bishop Hill, but I might be wrong, of course.

Ahhh, I never saw Curry’s post #414 at RC. It’s full of Gavin responses (the post and inline responses are worth a read).

I think that what happened is that it was held up in moderation until Gavin had time to include his inline commentary (which is not charitable to JC), because I recognize the posts that follow. I use the “recent posts” widgets to skip to new posts, but those held up in moderation and then approved afterwards appear in the posted sequence, and if there have been enough following posts, you don’t see such older posts in the “recent posts” widget.

So I never read her admission that her point #7 misrepresented Hill’s book (I’ve had no desire to read the parallel CA threads).

Amazing. I quote:
“Some people were getting their papers rejected because they disagreed with the IPCC.”

WTF? Who? Where? What’s the evidence? Most certainly not in the UEA e-mails, where the main issue was an uproar about hopelessly flawed papers making it into the literature, likely because certain septic editors rigged the system.

Also:
“These are people who are interested, they want to see accountability.” Right, McIntyre wants to see accountability. Not of Douglass et al, but of Santer et al. Not of Loehle, but of Mann. Not of McLean et al, but of Foster et al. And where is his own accountability?

[Err, no. I’d strongly oppose any attempt to silence Curry (not that I know of any such attempt) or any labelling of her a “heretic” (though I’ve only seen that from you, so far). For a start, I’d very much like to hear Curry speak on the subject of all those papers that were rejected for opposing the IPCC. Perhaps you know which ones she meant? -W]

Over at WUWT it’s the usual game – someone like Eschenbach makes use of copious amounts of innuendo (look at the title!) which then fuel the commenters to attack the honesty and competence of the scientists.

[Yes, the WUWT post is interesting. WE is just showing his biases by attacking the title, and the comments there would be funny if not so sad. But the main issue WE attacks – the data quality – looks valid, at first sight -W]

Here one of the smear comments against Dr Curry:
“Everyone mentions that she’s doing it for grant money. That may be so, but, what grants does she have? I only know how to search for NIH grants.

Can someone look that up so that we know if this paper is of her own recent volition or if she committed to studying it a while back and therefore must produce what she promised.”

[Yes, that was fun. They really can’t believe that she really does just swim in the mainstream as far as the science was concerned. They really thought she was one of them. Science-wise, she isn’t, of course -W]

Notice the special update messages by the WUWT inner circle to call for calm. Don’t usually get that.

“I ask you please treat Dr. Curry with respect in discussions since she is bending over backwards to be accommodating” -anthony

The implications of that seem to me that if you don’t bend over backwards to accommodate WUWT, they are happy to leave the dogs on you and even if you do, they can’t control their own dogs.

You seem to talk a lot about scientists and who’s stupid and who’s not. Let’s get you on record here. Do you mind answering the following questions on the record?

[I don’t think I talk a lot about who is stupid. Since this is the Curry thread, let me say that I think Curry is neither stupid, not apostate, nor a heretic, nor a septic, nor a denier. As to your questions, at least the first few questions are matters of public record, and the way you’ve phrased your questions is bizarre and repetitive. I am currently an (embedded) software engineer (the software is embedded, not me). I was formerly a climate modeller working for the British Antarctic Survey. I don’t know what you mean by credentials. I have a doctorate in numerical analysis, if that helps you -W]

(1) Are you currently a climate scientist?

(2) Have you ever been a climate scientist?

(3) Are you currently a professional climate researcher?

(4) Have you ever been a professional climate researcher?

(5) Are you currently a professional climate modeler?

(6) Have you ever been a professional climate modeler?

(7) Do you hold any formal credentials which would entitle you to claim any of the above?

(8) If you answered yes to question (7) could you please elaborate what those are?

I’m just trying to get a sense how you think about yourself and cut through the public hype and any faux perceptions people may have out here.

Sorry, didn’t mean to be bizarre or repetitive. If there is a more appropriate thread to be asking these sorts of things please direct me to it. For now let me ask the same thing in a slightly different way in an effort to get a more direct response.

Regarding the term scientist. People tend to argue about who is and isn’t a scientist. You yourself have on occasion made such a nuanced distinction. My question is, what is your definition of what it means to be a climate scientist and do you consider yourself to be one now or did you ever consider yourself to be one in the past? What credentials (academic degrees or professional accomplishments) would you argue someone must possess in order to be considered a legitimate climate scientist, and do you have any such qualifications?

[There is never a clear definition of these things. Credentials are somewhat beside the point: many of the Met Office’s finest don’t even have doctorates, though that is changing. The answer is almost entirely in the environment. A cliamte scientist is someone who works on, and publishes in, climate science -W]

For example I know that you have co-authored relevant scientific publications. Is that sufficient to be called a climate scientist? If so does that make someone like Steve McIntyre a climate scientist by that definition? I think I know your position on the latter point and I offer it only as an illustration. And if you ever move on to an unrelated career as you appear to have done, does that mean that you are not longer a climate scientist, but are in actuality a retired climate scientist or researcher or modeler?

[I am no longer a climate scientist, because I no longer work in the area. You can’t stay a scientist if you no longer do science. I’m not a retired CS because I didn’t retire. As for McI – he is part of the Grey Area. He has published, but very infrequently, and he doesn’t appear to be any part of a scientific community. So if pushed, I would say that no, he isn’t a CS. He is a Blog Scientist -W]

Regarding the term researcher. It seems to me that a climate researcher is someone who is a principle researcher in a climate related field of study and that they will most likely hold relevant credentials such that they would also be a climate scientist as described above. Would you agree with this view and is so, have you ever been a climate researcher? As a self-proclaimed software engineer you certainly don’t seem to fit that bill presently, but do you feel that you did at some time in the past? When you were with the British Antarctic Survey, for example.

[I don’t understand the distinction between CS and CR -W]

You say that both of these are a matter of public record, but that doesn’t tell me whether you believe either of these descriptions is applicable to you personally. Please help me understand what you think rather than pointing me to some nebulous public record.

Regarding the term climate modeler what is your definition of what it means to be a climate modeler? For example, you say that your background is in numerical analysis. Does that make you a climate modeler? I wouldn’t think so, per se. Numerical analysis doesn’t seem to have any relevant overlap with climate science.

[Numerical analysis has a clear overlap with climate modelling, because it forms part of the basis for the modelling. It makes the models far easier to understand. A climate modeller has no clear definition – it ranges from someone who works on programming the basic numerics with little “science” involved up to someone who does almost pure science with little programming at all -W]

So was your work at the British Antarctic Survey in the form of you being a principle researcher in a climate related field, or were you more of a computer modeler who was hired by a principle climate researcher to help them with your actual area of expertise, namely numerical analysis and computer programming/modeling?

[You should look up the papers -W]

Are you at liberty to share with us any general description of what your roles and responsibilities were as part of the British Antarctic Survey team on a daily basis? Is this documented as part of the public record somewhere?

If someone calling themselves “PubliusAnonymous” started asking me questions like that in a tone like that on *my* personal blog, I’d tell him – probably a him – to get lost. What a total jerk.

[His tone is odd. He does read like someone rather confused about these things. But I happen to be in a good mood, and everyone at wiki has recently been telling me to Be Nice, so perhaps Iwill be for a bit -W]

[I don’t think I talk a lot about who is stupid. Since this is the Curry thread, let me say that I think Curry is neither stupid, not apostate, nor a heretic, nor a septic, nor a denier.]

Fair enough. This does raise the question though, as to why you then chose to post this thread in the categories climate tripe and generic stupidity. I took that to mean that you considered them to be characteristics of Curry and/or that you considered her to be properly placed along side your other posts in those categories. I find that confusing so perhaps you could clear things up for me on that point?

[Even clever people occaisionally do stupid things. For example, my wofe once dropped a mobile phone down the toilet. That was stupid of her. But she isn’t stupid. That doesn’t seem like a difficult distinction to make, I would have hoped you might work that out. In this case, Curry has said some stupid things amounting to septic tripe -W]

And, for what it’s worth, I am not a scientist, although an increasing number of the things I do are science (and some people like to call me a “citizen scientist”, leading to some strange disagreements on blog threads). Many years ago I was a (published) computer scientist, but that’s a bird of rather different plumage.

WMC is the real thing (or, rather, “was”. He obviously retains the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff).

[Many years ago I was a (published) computer scientist, but that’s a bird of rather different plumage.]

Well that’s exactly what I am trying to get his opinion about. From his Wikipedia page it seems his formal training is in numerical analysis from a mathematics department. As a computer scientist I would think that you would agree that a degree with an emphasis in numerical analysis does not in any way qualify one to be a climate scientist or a climate researcher. Climate modeler perhaps depending on his role within the group.

If he was primarily focused on computer programming I still wouldn’t think that qualifies even for the title climate modeler. Presumably the “climate” part of “climate modeler” was coming from the principle researcher who actually did have such training and expertise and he was the “modeler” part.

No, I wouldn’t agree with that at all. I think a degree in maths and then a DPhil in numerical analysis are excellent spring-boards for almost any science. You somehow avoid mentioning the part of his Wikipedia page which says that our host was a Senior Scientific Officer at BAS, and the part which describes in some detail the climate research and modelling work he did there.
You also didn’t do even the most basic literature search. You just popped up here, off-topic, with a long list of questions most of which you could easily have answered for yourself.

[You somehow avoid mentioning the part of his Wikipedia page which says that our host was a Senior Scientific Officer at BAS, and the part which describes in some detail the climate research and modelling work he did there.]

Factually incorrect. Have you even read my posts? I clearly mention that he worked at BAS above. Please attempt to at least get the obvious facts straight.

As for the remainder of your post, while I disagree that a degree in numerical analysis prepares one in any way regarding climate and atmospheric science it is Dr. Connolley’s opinion I am after here, not yours.

[He does read like someone rather confused about these things.]

Quite right. I state as much above. I want you to clear the matter up for me if you wouldn’t mind. Since you are presumably not confused it should be a simple matter for you to respond, no?

Perhaps this will work better if we take it slowly and one step at a time.

Are you now or have you ever been in the past a climate scientist and by what definition of climate scientist are you making or rejecting the claim? What formal training have you had in climate and/or atmospheric science?

I assume you are capable of answering these rather straight forward questions, or is that a bad assumption for some reason?

[This has been fun for a while, but has now become dull. You’ve had your answers. I think Nick’s idea is a good one, or at least an amusing one: please provide, either here or via a link, broadly comparable information about yourself. Or find something else to talk about -W]

Well, it seems to be a substantive stretch to call it Curry’s paper since the PNAS page says:

J.L. designed research, J.L. performed research, J.L. analyzed data, and J.L. and J.C. wrote the paper.

I’m guessing that Liu is a PhD student or post-doc with perhaps not the best command of English. Also, this is an important-ish result, and Judy’s participation may have been key in getting it published in a prestige venue. Possibly she suggested the topic to Liu, but we don’t know that. Details on these points may be available on the WTF thread, but I’m not going to ruin an otherwise-pleasant afternoon by looking.

But I do think this illustrates nicely that while she has jumped the shark, she has not been eaten by it; IOW she continues to swim in the same waters as her colleagues.

[I think you’re wrong to call this an important result. It is an interesting hypothesis. There are quite a number of concerns over this paper – I plan to write it up when I get some time -W]

I tend to agree with you. Her problem seems to be in believing that some accommodation can be reached with the denialists. Perhaps this should be reclassified as naivete, although “generic stupidity” seems apropos.

“As a result, each of us exists in our own world of meaning, constantly at risk of being shattered by inconvenient facts. If we acknowledge them, they can destroy our sense of self. So, to ensure that we won’t be “overwhelmed by the uncertainty inherent in living in a world we can never truly know”, we shut them out by lying to ourselves”

expand it a bit, and this is why the CAGW delusion is so strong, ie the Gore, Greenpeace, wwf version of AGW (catastrophy)

Imagine what some would say if a sceptic wrote this:

“But it pains me to report that I find myself at odds with other greens almost as often as I find myself fighting our common enemies. I’ve had bruising battles over a long series of miracle solutions supported by friends: liquid biofuels, hydrogen cars and planes, biochar plantations, solar electricity in the UK, scrappage payments, feed-in tariffs. But no green delusion is as crazy as the one I am about to explain. The idea itself might not interest you. But the insight it gives into the filtering techniques humans use is fascinating. So please bear with me while I spell out the latest madness.”

Full article and context in the link above…

What is interesting, since the Guardain Climategate debate, George has not even written about the event he Chaired, and has been rather quieter, less strident(biodiversity, etc) this later article, especially.

[The idea of vertical farms powered by electricity seems obviously silly, so much so taht I don’t see that attacking it is interesting. I’m not clear what “shark jumping” you think Monbiot has done, but I may have missed something. If yuo mean the “We see what we want to see, deny what we don’t” then if he meant that literally and in all cases, he is obviously wrong. But I assume it is merely a figure of speech or lead-in; that people sometimes lie to themselves is, again, obvious and uninteresting. What you care about is “are people lying to themselves in a given situation”, which can only be usefully examined by considering the facts -W]

If they got it right, that is to say. Obviously I’m in no position to judge, and can but look forward to your deconstruction. Also, AFAICT, the importance would have to do with the pattern of ocean warming, not the sea ice bit.

[Ah, we may have a different perspective. I used to do sea ice, after all. The pattern of ocean warmnig is nothing new – that is all old stuff. The new bit is the proposed explanation of why the sea ice is growing -W]

[It looks to me as though Curry hasn’t read your question properly. She has answered “is sea ice known to be increasing there”, not the more interesting “how is this different from what has been done before” -W]